At this point, all the features for the next release are present in develop and the team is ready to lock the release. This article covers how to create a release branch in a Gitflow pipeline.
Opening the release creation view
To open a release, you can:
Select the PR counter to the right of the Integration stage, or
Select the Integration environment and open the Release creation tab.
This shows you all the features that have been merged into develop since your last release and are waiting for the next release.
What is included in a release
In Gitflow, a release includes everything currently merged into develop. This is by design. Gitflow is built around the principle that work merged into develop is production-bound, so the release is assembled from the full body of integrated work rather than a selective set of individual PRs.
If your team regularly needs to hold back or remove specific features at this stage, it is worth revisiting your planning and integration process.
Excluding the latest PRs from a release (optional)
In some situations, your team may need to exclude the most recently merged PRs from a release. If needed, you can exclude PRs in a linear sequence starting from the most recent one. Here is an example:
Selecting PR #3 includes all PRs up to and including that point. PRs #4 and #8 will be excluded from the release and displayed as greyed out.
Creating a Release
Once you are ready to lock the release, select Create release:
You can choose a release name (unless you have configured a release naming convention in your pipeline settings) and review a summary of the features included in the release:
Select Create release to cut the release branch. The name of the release will appear on the node in the Release and Testing stage, confirming that the release is locked and ready to move forward:
At this point, work on the next release can begin in
develop.
Once your release has been created, the next step is to view and validate its contents before promoting it to production.